Akademgorodok

Akademgorodok was founded in 1957 on the initiative of the mathematician Mikhail Lavrentyev, who argued that Soviet science needed a centre in Siberia away from Moscow, and it was built quickly in pine forest above the Ob reservoir - dozens of institutes, a university, housing, all laid out so that the forest was kept between the buildings rather than cleared, with streets curving around stands of trees. Through the 1960s it had a reputation for relative intellectual freedom, an active club culture and a famous 1968 bard festival with Alexander Galich that ended badly for the organisers. Institutes cover mathematics, nuclear physics, catalysis, geology and cytology, and some run museums: a geological museum with Siberian minerals, and a museum at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics associated with the long-running silver fox domestication experiment begun by Dmitri Belyaev in 1959. The town is quiet, green and slightly worn.

What you actually see

• The forest layout - institutes and housing built into pine woods, with the trees kept.
• The 1957 foundation - a science town created to move research east of the Urals.
• The fox experiment - the long domestication study at the genetics institute.
• The geological museum - Siberian minerals from the institute collections.

When to go

May to September for walking; winter is heavy with snow. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Institutes are working places, not attractions; most cannot be entered and museums inside them need booking. The fox facility is a research site with restricted and occasional access, not a petting attraction. The town looks ordinary at street level and the interest is largely in knowing what is behind the doors.

Nearby

The Ob reservoir beach is below; Novosibirsk is half an hour north.